VI Mystery: The Sacred Family, a Triangle of Love and Harmony - Part II

After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished; and his mother said to him, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.’  Luke 2:46-48

They observe without judging
It seems that Jesus' parents were already well versed in the norms of the nonviolent communication, because they did not judge, criticize or punish Jesus for his behavior. They simply observed their son’s behavior and passed this observation unto him. In passing their observation to Jesus, they did so assertively, not aggressively, taking care to assume responsibility for their feeling of distress, without accusing Jesus of being the cause of this affliction.

They do not intend to have the last word
He said to them, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?’ But they did not understand what he said to them.  Luke 2:49-50

During our childhood, it was always our parents who had the last word in the family. The same is not true in the Holy Family of Nazareth. In this episode, it is Jesus who has the last word; the ignorance and the lack of understanding of Jesus' parents about his life and ministry did not make them violent or make them insist that they are always right.

As St. Paul says, he did not use his privileges, humbling himself to death, even death on a cross
Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom ad in years, and in divine and human favour. Luke 2:51-52

Jesus must have been a child prodigy, like so many in our world. Excelling in many things that certainly caused his parents and neighbours to marvel. However, in addition to all the talents Jesus possessed, an attitude of humility was inherent in his person that made him comply obediently with his parents’ demands.

Joseph the Dreamer
Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet (Hosea 11:1), ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’  Matthew 2:13- 15

Joseph transcended his own ego and heard God’s word which he promptly obeyed and set out for Egypt to save his son's life. The Holy Family knows what it is like to be persecuted politically, and they know what it is like to be political refugees and immigrants in a country that was not their own. They were fleeing from genocide which is something that has always happened and still happens in our world. And the worst genocide of our time is abortion. The human being is the only animal that intentionally kills its own offspring.

Herod the Great thought it was justifiable in the eyes of his subjects to kill so many innocent children for fear that one of these little innocents would steal his throne. Leaders like this have always filled and still fill the world: people who fall in love with the power they have amassed and have no plan of ever letting it go, capable of anything in order to keep it within their grasp.

When each family member sets aside his or her own personal projects, like Joseph did, to obey the common project that is always the one that God inspires in our hearts and souls, then all family members find happiness and self-realization. Herod only loved Herod and his own ambitions; and this led him to even murder his own children.

Joseph is always at the service of his family, so the family comes first. Herod puts his projects first and his family last; we have many examples of great politicians who have troubled delinquent children because their families are dysfunctional since the parents who, like Herod, always put their projects first. The children of the famous, unlike their parents, are rarely famous...

Many parents, in their jobs, work overtime because their boss makes them think that they are indispensable: the parents gladly accept this, since this means more income for the family. They say that they do not want their children to lack anything, but, in reality, their children lack the most important thing: the parents’ presence and love, for which there is no substitute. The fallacy is that if the worker dies or gets sick, the boss quickly replaces him or her with another. It is in the family, as a father or a mother, that the worker is truly irreplaceable.

What Jesus’ relatives think of him
When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’  Mark 3:21

A mother who has kept silent all her life and held in her heart all the things that she did not understand with regard to her son’s life and ministry, is not going to have an attitude like that described to us by the evangelist St. Mark. It was the other relatives, the cousins of Jesus, one of them probably James who was later the leader of the first Christian community in Jerusalem, it was these relatives of Jesus, not his own mother, who were antagonistic to his ministry. It was these same relatives who would later enter into conflict with Jesus' disciples.

In a monarchy, the person who succeeds the king is a relative of the king, if he does not have any legitimate children. The leader of the Christian community was not Peter, as we might have thought by the order of the Master, but rather Jesus' cousin, James the Lesser. We see this clearly at the Council of Jerusalem, when they debated as to whether or not to force Christians who were not Jews to respect the Jewish laws. Peter inspires the decision, but it is James who decides, for it is he who has the last word.

The conflict between Jesus' relatives and Jesus' disciples could have happened in the Church as it did with the Muslims where a great conflict still exists between the Shiites who descended from the prophet through Fatima, his favorite daughter, and the Sunnis who descended from the prophet’s first disciples.

Jesus made it very clear that true disciples, that is, the ones who hear his word and put it into practice are his mother, brothers and sisters (Luke 8:21).

And so that not a shadow of doubt remains, on the cross Jesus called John, the beloved disciple, the son of his own mother, and he called his own mother the mother of his favorite disciple (John 19:26).

The Mother of Jesus and our mother
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. John 19:26-27

The Gospels present a Jesus who is sometimes distant and showing little regard for his mother. However, the proof that this is not true is here. Even at the height of his suffering on the cross, Jesus does not forget his mother, he does not forget that, like the widow of Nain to whom he gave back the life of her son, his mother was a widow, and was witnessing the death of her only son and preparing to be alone in the world.

The grandmother, with her trembling hands, one day accidentally dropped a fine porcelain China plate belonging to her daughter, at whose home she lived. The daughter became furious with her own mother and ordered her son to go and buy a plastic plate from which she was to eat from then on. The boy looked at his mother with an air of disapproval and refused to do her bidding. However, he eventually had to obey her and off he went. Upon returning home, he set two plastic plates on the table. The irritated mother asked him why did he buy two plastic plates when she had told him to buy only one. "The other," said the young man, "is for you when you're old like grandma."

Parents provide for their children in their childhood and children should provide for their parents in their old age. But this is not always the case in this world where what counts is being a consumer and a producer. When you cannot be one or the other, you are made to think that you have no place in this society.

Conclusion – Just as Jesus is for us, as individuals, the Way, the Truth and the Life, his family, the Holy Family, is also for us, as members of a family, a model of family life to imitate.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

VI Mystery: The Sacred Family, a Triangle of Love and Harmony

God is one and triune, yet no mystery of the Holy Rosary contemplates this reality that Jesus of Nazareth, who came from a heavenly family consisting of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, as the only begotten Son of God the Father, was born into an earthly family, had human parents with whom he lived in perfect love and harmony, growing in wisdom and grace as the Scripture tells us, like any boy of his time.

Normative for Christians is not only Jesus as an individual person, the Way, the Truth and the Life, but since the human person has a social dimension, Jesus’ social and family life, his family consisting of his mother and adoptive human father, is also normative for us, for there is no human life outside the family.

God is one and triune, the human being created in the image and likeness of God is also, naturally, one and triune. Father-Mother-Child, there is no human life beyond this triangle. Every human being is a father or a mother or a child. We are, at the same time, an individual and a social being, because we are each a whole, as an individual being, and a part as a member of a human family.

Each of the three human categories, father-mother-son/daughter, implies the existence of the other two. That is, no man is a father without a wife and a child, just as no woman is a mother without a husband and a child; lastly, a child of a single mother must have a father. The existence of one implies the existence of the other two. Jesus says of marriage, "The two will become one flesh", precisely when the two are one and are engaged in the conjugal or sexual act, they become three. That's why the human being is at the same time one and triune.

Mother without umbilical cord
Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travellers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him.  Luke 2:41-45

Mother hen, a terrible future mother-in-law
A father, even if he is the child’s biological father, is always an adoptive father because it is the mother who conceives in her body and nurtures the child for 9 months, and then for two years at her breast. At birth, the child only recognizes the mother and even recognizes her by her smell; the father is introduced to him later. And when this happens, the child and father look at each other like two strangers and, if the child is male, even as two rivals later on.

Unlike motherhood, fatherhood lacks the physical experience, as it only occurs at the microscopic cellular level and outside the man’s body. Therefore, St. Joseph, who was the adoptive father to Jesus, can perfectly be the model of fatherhood and the patron saint of all fathers, biological or otherwise. At the end of the day, God the Father in Heaven is also our adoptive Father, for He has only one Son who is begotten while we are creatures adopted by God the Father, by the merits of Jesus Christ who became our older brother.

Being a father or being a mother has its advantages and drawbacks. The fact that the father is adoptive, there is always a distance between him and the child, because fatherhood does not take place at the physical level. Motherhood, on the other hand, takes place at this level, so that a mother always finds it difficult to see her child as a separate entity from herself, and many never manage to cut the umbilical cord, always seeing the child not as a distinct person, but as an extension of herself.

I like jokes a lot, and yet I have never heard a joke against fathers-in-law; all the jokes of this nature target mothers-in-law. A mother hen has the tendency to be a terrible mother-in-law, always trying to interfere in her son's life even when he is already married and has formed a family.

The verse quoted above denotes that Mary and Joseph gave their son a lot of freedom, to the point that they went days without seeing him. We can conclude that Mary was not a mother hen, but a mother who knew her place and saw her son as a distinct person and not as an extension of herself.

The goal of a child's education is to make him free, independent and autonomous. In other words, a father and a mother should aim to make themselves obsolete and unnecessary when their children reach adulthood, maturity and autonomy. To love as St. Thomas Aquinas said is to want the good of the other as the other sees it, and not as we see it.

It is true that a father wants his child to succeed where he himself could not, but that should not prevent the child from choosing his life because he is the one who will live it. I have known many parents who did all kinds of blackmail to prevent their children from following their vocation, especially their religious vocation, despite being deeply religious themselves.

The family and the values of liberty - equality - fraternity
Liberty – is the value on which the life of the human person is based, as an independent and autonomous being. Without liberty there is no human life; in order to realize as a human person, an individual must be free, not dependent on anything or anyone. Free from external constraints, but also free from internal constraints such as addictions.... Therefore, there are two types of freedom: external and internal.

Equality – is the value on which the life of the individual who lives in society is based. No individual is an island, because every individual is born from a relationship of two individuals, a father and a mother. Therefore, every individual is and always will be part of a family, a clan, a tribe, a country...

Fraternity – a quark is the union of several gluons; several quarks form a proton which is one of the three elements of an atom. Gluten is a protein that makes a cereal like wheat look like glue after it is kneaded. I fear that gluten intolerance will start to be equally proportional to individualism in society and as a consequence, the love that makes all humans brothers and sisters will disappear.

Family, the only school of life
Like a human being, family is the result of millions of years of evolution. In evolution, reptiles generally do not need a family, they are born from eggs; while birds and mammals need a family for a few months. In the evolution of species, the closer an animal is to human, the more time coexisting in a family it will need before it can be free, independent and autonomous.

A human being is the living being that needs the most time coexisting in a family; so, the family is the only place where human life can exist. The family is the "habitat" of human life, as the sea is for whales and sharks, the South Pole is for penguins, the North Pole is for polar bears and the savannah is for lions. Since a human being is not born in the adult state, like some living beings, without the family there is no human life.

Human beings are not born, they are made. A child at birth has all the potentials to become a human person. However, these potentials must be cultivated within a family, by the parents and older siblings. Everything in a human being is learned, like walking upright, speaking, loving, most of the things in human life are learned, there is very little that is innate.

A child without contact with people would never learn to walk or talk, as the myth of Tarzan suggests; if a child were raised by chimpanzees, he would be a hairless chimpanzee; if he were raised by a she-wolf, he would be a wolf for all intents and purposes, with a human appearance only.

It takes many years of study to train a doctor, an engineer or an architect; and since the world needs more good parents than these professions, How come there is not even a weekend course to learn how to be a parent?

Education is "aerial" and continuous
"Son you are, father you shall be, as you do so you shall find."

Unlike other schools, where there are lesson periods and break periods, in the school of life, of the family, there are no vacations. All family moments and situations are educational, for better or for worse. Education is "aerial" and continuous; in the school of life, the child is always in the classroom.

Because education is "aerial", the family is a school where children learn not from what they are told, but from what they see; it is the seedbed where growth can be controlled and guided. Making a baby is easy, the difficulty is to turn a child into an authentic human being. It's one thing to be a biological parent, it is another to be a father or a mother.

In the family we learn the main attitudes by which we will live; therefore, parents should keep in mind that a child imitates more readily than learns. A child who sees his drunken father beating his mother, swearing obscenities, engaging in immature, immoral and illegal behaviors, will most likely reproduce these same behaviors in his adult life.  

We all remember phrases from our parents that have shaped our lives, some positive, some negative. "He who sows winds reaps storms”, "sow love, and you shall reap love; sow hatred and hatred will be what you will reap", "a child is like a field, he will only produce what is sown in him", or "the son of a fish knows how to swim". No one gives what he does not have; a father cannot pass on to his child what he does not have. The son of a scoundrel will be a scoundrel, just as the son of a thief will be a thief.

Educating a child is an immense responsibility in itself, towards the child and the society. The world improves not so much by revolutions, but by conversions, when men become better; it is our contribution to the world. How many parents take their task lightly? A father should seek to pass on to his child his virtues and not his flaws. If your sons and daughters are like you or worse than you, what is the meaning of your life?

"As the twig is bent, so is the tree inclined "
For children, the family is like a greenhouse, since children are not yet ready to live in the open world; in the greenhouse, we can control their growth, the temperature, the humidity, the pest control, etc.

The world outside the family is an inhospitable place, for which the family prepares us, strengthens or weakens us. The school and the street, good or bad, are the same for everyone: there are bullies, there are drugs, there are potential crimes, and those who succumb to them are those who do not have a strong and meaningful family where love, harmony and peace rule.

In addition to being a greenhouse, the family is also a hospital where adolescents, young people and even adult children recover from the wounds that society inflicts on them. They spend their convalescence within the family, until they can return to society, strengthened and with lessons learned.

"An Englishman's home is his castle". This is a very interesting expression about the dedication that parents should have to the sacred space that is the family. Today, there are many enemies of the family, even the government itself can be an enemy of the family. Parents should not only beware of the enemies from outside: TV, internet, mobile phone or computer can be today like a real Trojan horse that boycotts education and the values that parents want to transmit.

Unconditional love
As the habitat and school of human life, the attitude, the most important value to learn is unconditional love. Only in the family we are loved unconditionally, therefore only in the family can we learn to love unconditionally. Only those who are loved unconditionally by their parents and siblings learn to love unconditionally.

Love is unconditional or it is not love. Family is the only place where you are loved without conditions, whether you are good or bad, beautiful or ugly, intelligent or stupid. God loves unconditionally, but anyone who is not loved unconditionally by his parents will hardly discover the unconditionality of God's love. Many Christians think that they must be good to be loved by God. Whoever does not learn to love unconditionally can never live fully and be authentically and genuinely human.

I knew a young woman who, as a child, received hugs and kisses from her parents only when she excelled in school. She learned to confuse love with success in school that later turned into professional success. Today, as an adult, she is very successful professionally, but not so successful in her love life, in which she is unhappy. There is nothing more important than love. Those who do not love have never lived, because to live is to love.

Conclusion – The myth of Tarzan reveals to us that, in human life, very little is innate, almost everything is learned within the family which is an irreplaceable school of life.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC